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Mariani's Virtual Gourmet
Clemente Gómez, the Denominación
de Origen Protegida (D. O. P.) Pedroches’s
Cortador Oficial Jose Ángel Muñoz (below), Maestro
Cortador of Ibérico ham for producer Arturo
Sánchez in Guijuelo, is from Granada. Like many
Andalucian natives who identify with bullfighting,
he compares being a ham cutter to being a torero,
contending that his attitude is the key to getting
the best out of each jamón and
that “cutting hams is like facing a bull. You have
to be extremely prepared. One of my qualities is
in my wrist, I have temple in
it.” Temple is
that essential quality in bullfighters who have
mastered the art of controlling a bull by slowing
it down and measuring a pass so that a bull seems
ever so fluidly and exquisitely to flow by the
body of the matador.
Jose Ángel Muñoz (below), Maestro
Cortador of Ibérico ham for producer Arturo
Sánchez, with Arturo Sánchez at Madrid Fusión 2018.
Muñoz believes his low-key
professional ham cutting style is based on patience,
perfection and dexterity—the wrist again. He also
claims to “listen” to each ham, registering the way
each responds as it is being carved, the level of
oleic acid that may seep out from the meat, and the
aroma of nuttiness, depending upon how well aged the
ham is.
"When a Maestro
Cortador ‘opens’ a jamón, he
or she already knows what defects and virtues the
ham might have. Each ham tells you about the curing
process it has undergone. The texture of the
fat-infiltrated eat can tell you a lot about the
quality of la
montanera that the pig has undergone and about
the curing process,” Muñoz says. “I still remember a
ham I carved a few years ago in Sevilla that was
without a doubt the best ham I have ever cut. The
fat infiltration in that ham made it seem like I was
cutting butter.”
Joselito,
officially Cárnicas Joselito, is a 152-year-old
Ibérico producer in Guijuelo that is generally
considered to be the Petrossian of fine Ibérico
hams and charcuteria. Joselito jamones are literally allocated and each year’s allotment
has
to be partially paid for up-front, while the hams
are still aging.Pre-Covid, Joselito billed an estimated
€40,000,000 annually.
The public face behind Cárnicas Joselito is
55-year old José Gómez (right), a no-nonsense
man of solid Ibérico stature who, although always dressed in a fine
conservative dark business suit, is a rock
star in the gourmet food business. Over the past
decade Joselito has not sponsored many
product-presentation stands at gourmet shows,
instead setting up its own pavilions, where Gómez
entertains the culinary world’s royalty like the jamón king
that he is. French Champagne flows freely and
waiters pass generous plates of his jamón and
charcutería
Ibérico de bellota—superb caña de lomo (cured
pork loin), chorizo Ibérico, salchichón
(cured pink salami-like sausage) and coppa (or cabecero,
made from select meat from the head of the pig).
Ernesto
Soriano is the main cortador
for Joselito. He is a motorcycle enthusiast with a
shaved head, full beard and formidable tattoos on
his arms. On his Facebook page, he posted a picture
of himself that he labelled “súper chunga,”
joking that he was a badass, but he is married with
two young children he adores. When he is not on the
circuit, his day job is cutting hams at Joselito’s
Charcutería & Restaurante in Madrid.
In early February 2018, I went to Joselito’s
Veláquez store-restaurant to see if I could at least
photograph a cortador
cutting jamón
Joselito. I got lucky, because Ernesto Soriano was
at Joselito’s with his compañero
cortador, David Alonso Martínez.
When
I asked Soriano (left) how he became a
professional cortador
de jamón, he told me, “I have been carving Ibérico
hams for thirty years, the last five of which I have
been lucky enough and privileged to be the Cortador
Oficial for Joselito. Like a majority of cortadores,
I began as an apprentice in a charcutería
in a supermarket in the Madrid Barrio of Mortalaz. I
never took a ham cutting course, I just observed how
others carved hams, and I learned and evolved,
constantly seeking to perfect my technique.”
Soriano also echoed a refrain I heard from
the other cortadores,
“To be a successful professional cortador de
jamón, you must have respect for the product,
a lot of respect.
I believe the jamones are
a product that is above us as ham cutters. Cortadores
are the final link in the chain before a ham reaches
the customer; therefore we have the responsibility
to treat the ham with the affection it deserves. A
lot of work has been done in the fields where the
pigs are raised and the process—the salting, curing
and drying in the cellar—requires a special skill
before it reaches us. If we do not handle and carve
the hams properly, we are disrespecting many people
who do a very hard job of getting us the best
possible product.”
Soriano gave me a lesson in the tools that
each cortador
uses in the craft of carving fine jamones.
Each cortador
has a carrying case, like a matador with his sword
case. Like Juanma Aguilar’s tool case, they are
usually embossed with his name and calling card
information.
Soriano told me, “There are different knives,
not just the classic long, thin-blade jamonero,
or ham knife, that we use for much of the carving
process. For opening a ham, I like to use a cuchillo de
sierra, a serrated knife typically used to cut
bread, to slice away the hard outer covering or rind
of a ham. You have to be very careful to clean the
blade, because the outer layer of the ham has
bacteria we do not want on the slices of ham that we
cut. We also use a small, very sharp and
sharp-tipped boning knife called a puntilla that
I use to marcar
el hueso, or cut around the hip joint bone and
the femur, so that each slice towards the bone comes
away cleanly.”
Some ham cutters, including Ernesto Soriano,
prefer a Japanese alveolated jamonero
knife, sometimes referred to as a cuchillo de
salmon, a cured-salmon cutting knife that has
notched hollows spaced the length of the blade,
which allows the formation of air pockets that keep
the slices from sticking to the blade.
The remaining tools include a set of steel
pincers to grip each slice as it is being cut and a
small, pointed device made of wire sometimes used to
burrow down alongside bones. In many kits, a steel
chain-mail oyster-opener glove is sometimes used to
protect the non-cutting hand from wounds from a
wayward knife.
Despite
the importance of their artistry, as The Ministro de
Labor y Empleo does not yet recognize cortador as
a real job. José Ángel Muñoz
laments, “Unfortunately, the profession of ham
cutter does not yet officially exist. But little by little we will get
the government to acknowledge that cutting ham is a
legal employment classification.”
After a brief tour of the curing rooms at Cinco Jotas
Sánchez Carvajal in Jabugo (Huelva, Andalucía), Chef
Ryan McIlwraith and Executive Chef Joel Ehrlich,
whom I was leading on a Spanish gastronomy research
tour in preparation for their opening of Bellota in
San Francisco, joined me and Cinco Jotas official Cortador Severiano
“Seve” Sánchez (right) in a dining room the
firm uses to entertain guests. Sánchez gave us a
seminar on ham cutting and showed us the differences
in the distinct areas of a ham.
“If a jamón is
really fine, the knife just glides through the meat
and fat,” he said, “signifying that it comes from a
pig that has had a good diet of acorns so the fat is
well marbled into the meat. If the knife does not
cut through the meat easily, that shows that the pig
from which it came has not had a diet sufficiently
high in acorns.”
Sánchez demonstrated that there are four
distinctly flavored parts to each ham, beginning
with “la maza,
the widest section of the ham with the greatest area
of cured rind. Next he showed us la contramaza,
which some sources claim is the same as the la babilla
section of the ham, but is actually higher up on the
leg, nearer the hip bone. La babilla
is the thinner side of the ham with a lesser outer
layer of fat, then there is la punta,
the bottom part of the ham and finally el jarrete,
the thin part of the leg that ends in the hoof.
Sánchez
opened the outer layers of la maza and
discarded them, saying, “This
outer layer protects the ham as it is aging and is a
part of the curing process. It is bitter and not
good to eat, so we do not want it to come in contact
with the fresh-cut parts of the ham. The ideal
temperature range for conserving a jamón
should be between 14°C and 18°C (54°F and 64°F). The
ideal temperature for consumption should be between
20°C and 24°C (68°F and 75°F).
He sliced a fine layer of fat from the upper
part of the maza,
wrapped it around his finger and rubbed it to show
us how the fat melts,
then how the maza slices are
marbled. Next, he showed us the contramaza,
below the maza.
Because the hams hang from the hoof during the
curing and drying process, it is somewhat more cured
than la maza,
so the slices come out smaller.
In addition to the Maestros Cortadores, there are numerous other
free-lancers like Juanma Aguilar (below), who
has his own ham distribution business, Barrios, in
Valencia. He showed us how he selects a ham and demonstrated how he tests the quality of the fat in
a ham by inserting his index finger into it. “My
finger is the temperature of my body,” he said. “Being a ham cutter has
permitted me to know other European countries
where many great people have taught me a lot. I
would like to be dedicated just to cut hams like
Florencio Sanchidrián, but, everyone has their own
path. I have always had to run my ham and
charcuterie business, so I do not always have the
time to go away to ham cutting contests and food
fairs, because the kilometers you have to travel
and the expense can make an old man of you.”
Although being a cortador de jamón is a male-dominated profession, there are several women cortadoras de jamón, most notably up-and-comers Raquel Acosta and Silvia Andrada. Acosta is a have-cuchillo-will-travel ham artista, who freelances as Cortadora de Jamón Raquel
Acosta Quintanilla and bills herself as a
#haminfluencer, willing to journey
nationally and internationally to “influence” hams
for interested clients. Andrada, who lives in
Salamanca and won the Castilla y León ham cutting
competition in 2017, works with Corte Fusión, a
group of cortadores de jamón who offer their ham carving
services.
A whole universe is distilled into a finished quality
jamón Iberico and into a consummate ham cutter. All the tools and
training, all the montanera, the acorns the pigs eat, the ham selection and
curing process and the ham carver come together to provide to the uninitiated what seems to be the
simple act of eating a slice of ham. But, from
a Maestro
Cortador, a fine slice of jamón Iberico
de bellota, though more easily encountered
than a finely shaved white truffle perfuming a plate
of pasta or a mound of Ossetra caviar on a mother of
pearl spoon, is no less exquisite.
Constructive comments are welcome and encouraged.
If
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continue the work of gathering all this great information and these
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Text and photographs
copyright by Gerry Dawes©2021. Using photographs without crediting Gerry Dawes©2021 on
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* * * * *
Shall deeds of Caesar or Napoleon ring
More true than Don Quixote's vapouring?
Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod
Than Rocinante stumbling up to God?
Poem
by Archer M. Huntington inscribed under the Don Quixote on his horse
Rocinante bas-relief sculpture by his wife, Anna Vaughn Hyatt
Huntington,
in the courtyard of the Hispanic
Society of America’s incredible museum at 613 W. 155th Street, New York
City.
_________________________________________________________________________
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36. Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel
About Gerry Dawes
My good friend Gerry Dawes, the unbridled Spanish food and wine
enthusiast cum expert whose writing, photography, and countless
crisscrossings of the peninsula have done the most to introduce
Americans—and especially American food professionals—to my country's
culinary life." -- Chef-restaurateur-humanitarian José Andrés, Nobel
Peace Prize Nominee and Oscar Presenter 2019
Gerry Dawes was the Producer and Program Host of Gerry Dawes & Friends, a weekly radio progam on Pawling Public Radio in Pawling, New York (streaming live and archived at www.pawlingpublicradio.org and at www.beatofthevalley.com.)
Dawes
was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía
(National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on
Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural
tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's
Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava
Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004,
was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles
& Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the
2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature
in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about
Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.
".
. .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià
in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow
narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish
correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food
journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a
self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again
brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane
Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher,
Food Arts, October 2009.
Pilot for a reality television series
on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
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